Get best of the week

Top 10 memes of the past decade

Usually we talk about what and how we use in our work on the iFunny application. But today is a special day - April 1, April Fool's Day, and we consider this day to be our professional holiday. After all, we "saw" the funniest of all entertainment applications - an application with memes!



Yes, memes have become so popular on the Internet (people of all ages exchange them, from schoolchildren to retirees) that some companies even have posts of “memologues” - people who understand memes and use them to promote on social networks and other media sites.

And today we suggest recalling what generated a huge number of memes and what was most laughed at on the Internet over the past decade (the selection is based on the ratings of various American online publications, we chose one of them for each year).

2010


Bed Intruder Song is an autotune remix for an interview that garnered 145 million views, became the most popular video on Youtube in 2010, hit the Billboard charts and spawned imitators who started making similar videos in an attempt to achieve the same success.


Bed Intruder at iFunny

2011


Friday (Rebecca Black) - a song with stupid lyrics that was noticed by the Internet, spread over quotes and memes, became the most “disliked” video of 2011 (at that time more than a million dislikes), which generated several covers in entertaining evening shows and even managed to get into in the top 100 on iTunes.


Rebecca Black at iFunny


2012


Gangnam Style became the most watched video on Youtube by the end of 2012. Screenshots and gifs with a dance from it instantly became memes on all the entertainment sites of the planet, in almost all countries movie stars and pop stars and politicians imitated this dance. A video that proved to the whole world that the language barrier is not an obstacle to the spread of creativity.


Gangnam Style at iFunny


2013


Doge - memes with shiba inu, speaking broken English, captured the world in 2013. The users liked it so much that they started releasing merchandise, created a cryptocurrency in her honor, increased interest in Shiba Inu dogs in the world, and memes continue to be created to this day.

Doge at iFunny


2014


The Ice Bucket Challenge is the first online challenge to draw attention to the problem of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and bring over 220 million dollars to the fund to fight this disease. Participants had to pour in icy water and transfer the challenge further, and who did not have time to fulfill, he should make a donation to the charity fund. It was attended by many, from ordinary Internet users to Bill Gates and George W. Bush.


Ice Bucket Challenge at iFunny


2015


The Dress is a photograph of a dress that divided the world in half: someone saw white and gold, and someone saw blue and black. The main topic of conversation at the cooler in offices and disputes on the Internet, even among celebrities, in 2015. Sites staged a vote, and users analyzed the photo in Photoshop, trying to figure out the true color of the dress.

The Dress at iFunny


2016


Pepe - Pepe the frog, which has been familiar to Internet users since the mid-2000s, gained a second life when it became a symbol of ultra-right groups, and the US anti-defamation league registered it as a symbol of hatred. In addition, Pepe was proposed as an option to replace the New Zealand flag, the comic religion of Kek was created in his honor, the Internet was filled with his image, and in 2019 he became a symbol of Hong Kong's resistance against China.

Pepe at iFunny


2017


Distracted Boyfriend - stock photo with a guy looking at another girl, captured the Internet by a storm, received hundreds of thousands of likes, reposts and retweets, became so popular that signatures are still being invented for her.

Distracted Boyfriend at iFunny

2018


Is this a pigeon? - a frame from the anime Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, in which a humanoid stranger confuses a butterfly with a dove, became one of the most popular memes of 2018, after a Netflix account on Twitter posted a version of this meme about actors in high school series. Netizens immediately began to attribute to him signatures that wishful thinking, and created a huge amount of content, which allowed the meme to still remain relevant.

Is this a pigeon? at iFunny


2019


Woman Yelling at a cat : two separate pictures - a screenshot from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality show and a dissatisfied cat in a restaurant - were merged into one on Twitter and received over 780,000 retweets, which led to the creation of the best meme of 2019. He received hundreds of variations, video remixes, comics and became part of other metamemes.   

Woman Yelling at a Cat in iFunny


If we talk about the popularity of these memes today, their impact on pop culture, recognition and the creation of new ones, then, in our opinion, the list may look like this:

  1. Pepe
  2. Doge
  3. Gangnam style
  4. Ice bucket challenge
  5. Distracted boyfriend
  6. Bed intruder song
  7. The dress
  8. Woman Yelling at Cat
  9. Is this a pigeon?
  10. Friday (Rebecca Black)


If you look at the statistics of these memes by tags in iFunny for the entire lifetime of the application, then the top 10 looks like this:

  1. Doge (205000)
  2. Pepe + pepethefrog (123000 + 15000)
  3. Dress (46000)
  4. Gangnam + Gangnamstyle (20,000 + 1,300)
  5. Distracted Boyfriend (7400)
  6. Is this a pigeon (1600)
  7. Ice Bucket Challenge (986)
  8. Rebecca black (Friday) (353)
  9. Woman Yelling at Cat (86)
  10. Bed Intruder (33)

We cannot guess, but we think that many memes from these lists will stay with us in the next decade. But whether the memes that have already appeared this year - about the third world, baby Yoda, the Witcher and the coronavirus - will gain the same popularity. Here only "time will tell."

And finally:

More articles:


All Articles